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How to Record Acoustic Guitar
There are several great ways to record an acoustic guitar. Let's take a look at them.
One of the most important aspects of recording acoustic guitar is the sound of the room. If you have good room acoustics, then it’s difficult to get a bad sound. You can use almost any microphone, and place it almost anywhere and get good results.
Some instruments, such as a trumpet or vocals, the sound emanates from a single and relatively small point. These instruments are easy to find the optimal microphone position. An acoustic guitar however, the sound emanates from the entire instrument. The strings sound differently on the neck then they do in front of the body. The whole body produces sound, especially from the front sound hole. So because there’s different sounds coming from different parts of the instrument, it’s hard to find a spot that encompasses the whole sound together nicely, unless you use an omnidirectional microphone placed a little farther away, but then you would pick up more of the room.
I usually find the best spot to focus on the guitar to pick a nice blend is around the 14th fret, or where the neck meets the body. I usually place my microphones about a foot and a half in front of that spot, and aiming there.
Usually, I use a single condenser microphone, and double track for a stereo effect. To do this, I’ll take 2 different recordings that are as identical as possible, and hard pan them left and right.
I don’t have a preference between large diaphragm condenser, or small diaphragm condenser, they both sound great.
The polar pattern depends on the room. If the room is big and ambient and sounds really nice, I might go with omnidirectional. Usually however, I just use a cardioid.
Another method I like to use sometimes is the MS recording style. This uses the same single microphone in the same position as using a single microphone, but I add a second microphone to it. The second microphone will have a figure 8 polar pickup pattern, and is positioned at 90 degrees from the first microphone. In post, I blend the sound of the 2 microphones together, but for the figure 8 microphone, I invert the phase of just one side, either left or right. This is what creates the stereo effect.
A very common method for recording acoustic guitar is the XY setup. This requires 2 microphones with the capsules placed as close together as possible, and positioned at a 90 degree angle from each other. Placed in front of the 14th fret this gives a nice wide sound.
Some people like to place the microphone above the players shoulder so that it captures the sound as it is heard by the player.
You can use a condenser microphone, dynamic microphone or a ribbon. They can all sound fantastic.
Some acoustic guitars have a piezo electric pickup, and you can plug them in and record them directly. The advantage of this is that it is unaffected by room acoustics, and it won’t pick up external sounds. So if there’s a full band playing, you can have isolation on the guitar track. The disadvantage of recording it direct inject is that it doesn’t capture the tone of the guitar as nicely. It tends to sound thin and tinny.
